FRAMINGHAM -- An unexplained influx of new Brazilian immigrant students in
recent months has forced the school district to open two new bilingual
classes in the kindergarten and first grade.

The surge is surprising school officials, who have seen the town's Brazilian
population level off since 2001, and is crimping an already tight school
budget.

The district hired a new teacher early last fall when the bilingual
kindergarten class at Potter Road Elementary School reached 31 students,
Director of Bilingual Services Susan McGilvray-Rivet said.

Now school officials are adding a first-grade bilingual class at Woodrow
Wilson Elementary School to accommodate large groups there and at Potter
Road. The district is moving a few students from Potter Road, which
now has 28 Portuguese-speaking first-graders, to Wilson Elementary, which has
31.

Each school had about 25 bilingual first-graders when the school year
started. As a guideline, the School Committee has said first-grade
classes should not exceed 24 students.

"The classes even to start the year were definitely at a maximum,"
McGilvray-Rivet said. "Once we got more students, then we really had
to do something about it."

In healthy economic times, school districts might begin the year with smaller
classes in anticipation of new enrollment.

"The financial situation has been so tight that we've had to plan for the
number of students that we have," McGilvray-Rivet said. "We have to
react after the fact."

She said the immigrant population in the second grade is also creeping higher
at the two schools -- 27 at Wilson and 26 at Potter Road. And the
high school has added between 20 and 25 immigrant students since the end
of the last school year.

Leaders of local and state immigrant advocacy groups said they have seen no
evidence of a surge in immigrants from Brazil.

"I've been hearing of people moving out more than moving in," said Ilma
Paixao, president of the Brazilian American Association in Framingham.

Ali Noorani, the executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and
Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said the students might be from families who are not new to the area and only now decided to enroll their children.

"It would be kind of surprising that there's a sudden influx," he said.
"I would venture that these are families coming of age."

McGilvray-Rivet said she knows the students are from new families because
the school district gathers residency data and information about students
previous schooling before they are enrolled.

Assistant Superintendent Walter McClennen is scheduled to present a detailed
report on class sizes to the School Committee on Jan. 10.

"We do have an increase in the Brazilian population coming into the schools,"
he said. "That's something we're watching."